When the COVID-19 outbreak first made its effects felt in the Charlotte region in March, David Bulfin grew worried as someone with high-risk vulnerability to the virus.

Bulfin, a senior industrial designer at Charlotte-based BOLTGROUP, responded by designing the Fearless Touch Device to combat the transmission of Covid-19. The device is printable on any 3D printer and prevents touching of public door handles and other common touchpoints with one’s hands.

“Living our new pandemic life here in our apartment building, I realized all of these different, noticeable, common touchpoints,” Bulfin said. “The elevator buttons, the lobby doors, the mailboxes. … It was something that needed to exist, so I made it.”

Bulfin has made the device free for anyone to download. He didn’t want to go through the process of selling it, he said, and instead wanted to make it immediately available to anyone who could need it.

The device is designed to primarily push and pull, he said. It works to push buttons and pull handles in high-traffic places and he posted a video on his Instagram page to display its potential uses.

“It’s insanely simple,” Bulfin said. “But at the heart of it, it’s mathematically designed and it’s designed to fit the greatest number of people’s hands as possible.”

Bulfin said BOLTGROUP, a design and innovation company, is taking its own steps to help with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The firm has launched a web series called Innovations That Matter, which Bulfin hosts. It focuses on innovations that were made to respond to COVID-19. BOLTGROUP is also working on concepts for an ultraviolet disinfecting mailbox, Bulfin said. The device would keep mail and packages clean and sterile in a hands-free manner, he said.

The firm has implemented work-from-home measures during the pandemic, Bulfin said, but he added that business has still been good. However, it has forced the company to take different approaches to client interactions and communication.

“We’re all using online collaboration more than we ever imagined,” Bulfin said. “We’re continuing to try new things. We have some pilot programs that we already have underway about how to virtualize really wide, integrated, brainstorming sessions.”